The Glendower Legacy (39 page)

It was Polly and he sank back on the pillows, smiling like a schoolboy.

“Colin, I woke up with the most awful thought,” she said, sounding dry and still half asleep. “I knew we’d forgotten something … Nora Thompson!”

“Nora Thompson,” he repeated. “My God, she’s still down at the Parker House, poor thing. She must think the earth opened up and swallowed us—”

“Well, we’ve got to take care of her, do something—”

“She has had a nice vacation, though. Expenses paid, if you recall …”

“Pick me up in an hour. I’ve got to spend at least forty-five minutes in a steamy tub. I’ve never been so stiff in my entire life. It’s just hitting me now.”

“Me too. See you in an hour.”

The morning was bright, clean, cold, with a sweet-smelling ground fog hanging over the Cambridge Common as he drove past. Polly was waiting at the curbside, doing deep breathing. She wore a navy peacoat, gray slacks, penny loafers. She kissed him. Her mouth was cold and fresh.

Over breakfast an astonished Nora Thompson heard a carefully edited version of their story, accepted their assurances that it was over. That somehow the world had been made safe for Nora Thompson to go home again.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve known for several days what the package contained—”

“You have! How?” Colin felt his eyes widening.

“A professor at Oxford returned my call, he’d been on one of poor Mr. Underhill’s lists, and he said a Belgian who’d been at dinner with Mr. Underhill that last night in Bucharest told him about the document.” She nodded, agreeing with herself, sipping her coffee. “That’s right, can you believe it? Told me all about George Washington’s signature and his being an English spy … I asked him what he thought about it, did it seem like the truth. ‘I’ve no doubt your Mr. Underhill had a document,’ he said, all huffy and pompous, ‘but the document’s rubbish! Poppycock! Should have known better, I’d say.’ His exact words.”

Polly glanced at Chandler, said: “That seems to be the general opinion. Professor Prosser, Colin’s departmental chairman, said much the same thing, didn’t he, Colin?”

“Most certainly. Said it was all nonsense.”

“Then these people have died for nothing,” Nora Thompson said wistfully.

In the afternoon they collected Hugh at the hospital. He looked a trifle peaked, a state he attributed to the difficulty involved in trying to eat with large, mittenlike bandages on your hands. Otherwise, he was in good spirits, if rather confused as to what precisely had been going on.

“Prosser told me I’d killed one of the bastards. That made me feel much better about the whole thing. Said there would obviously be no charges … and get this, he said there was some speculation that Pliers and his little wheezer of a pal were Russian agents! Well, Christ, what can you say to that? Quite a guy, Prosser … damn good thing you contacted him and you are very welcome for the suggestion. Now, Miss Bishop—Polly, if I may—tell me how you’ve been fighting off this fellow these past days … or is it weeks? Jesus, I don’t know which end is up, to be perfectly frank—”

“Hugh,” Colin said as the car neared the Yard on Massachusetts Avenue.

“Yes, my lad.”

“Hugh, have we got a story for you.”

“You don’t say …”

Together the three of them strolled the jumble of streets converging on Harvard Square, braced by the sunshine and the cold. The world had a brittle, newly minted air about it. Polly and Colin took turns with the telling, left out nothing. They finished at the foot of the Widener Library steps.

“So now I’m supposed to believe all this,” Hugh said. The color had returned to his face and already it seemed to be filling out.

“Could we make it up?” Polly said.

“You have a point there,” Hugh said. “Colin?”

“So help me God.”

“It’s just a game then, that’s what you’re telling me—what Prosser told you.” He considered the contention, shrugged. “Well, why not? It makes more sense than believing that there’s some big point to all the bullshitting … I mean, if Prosser’s right, it explains a lot. Jokes—we’re living in a world of bad jokes. It makes too damned much sense …”

“Tough on the people who die, though,” Polly said. She put her arm through Colin’s, then through Hugh’s, walking between them.

“Hell, tough on the people who just get their fingernails pulled out.”

“The rotten part,” Chandler said, “is that they didn’t even know it was a game.”

“What about Washington, though?” Hugh asked. “The kid back there at Valley Forge … he said he
saw
him—”

“I choose,” Colin said, “to believe that he was mistaken.”

Polly decided that it would be best for Hugh to room with Chandler until his hands became somewhat more manageable. It wouldn’t do, she argued, to have you survive the torture of KGB thugs only to starve to death in a kitchen full of food. Consequently they stopped at Hugh’s, packed the essentials, and carted them over to Colin’s house where there was an extra bedroom prepared for the guest.

They sent out for pizza and Chandler broke out a bottle of champagne. There were several toasts: to survival, to the remarkable Harvard professors, to Bert Prosser and his Rolls-Royce …

“And to Polly Bishop,” Colin said, lifting his glass, pausing.

“Yes, man,” Hugh cried, “get on with it!”

“Whom I love with all my heart!”

Polly gave it a good try but one tear escaped, hung beneath her long dark lash. Colin kissed it away.

“Hark,” Hugh said. “Did I hear a sound at the door? Could it be the pizza man?” He lumbered into the hallway. Polly sniffled. Colin Chandler looked down at her fondly, feeling as if it had all somehow become a fairy tale.

“What the hell is this?” Hugh was making peculiar sounds in the hallway. Then the door slammed and presently he reappeared pushing a large cardboard packing box along the floor with his foot. “No pizza … just this and a car making off down the street. Well, don’t just stand there—I’m in no condition to open boxes …”

“There’s no name on it,” Polly said, kneeling.

“I’ll open it,” Colin said. “Is it ticking?”

He pulled the packing tape off and folded back the flaps. Slowly he worked his fingers into the excelsior packing material, took hold of something smooth and cold, pulled it slowly up out of the box until it was in plain view—creamy white, noble, sightless, perfect. Dumbstruck, they could do nothing but stare.

Houdon’s bust of Washington.

O
GDEN WAS HOLDING PROSSER’S VELVET-COLLARED
black chesterfield when the master came down the steps. He was wearing dinner clothes, bound for a formal dinner at a friend’s club. It was in fact an Old Boys’ dinner, an annual gathering of men who had attended the same preparatory school. Prosser rather enjoyed the chance to see so many men who had turned out to have surprisingly little in common but their adolescence. Usually it made him feel rather good about himself, a state of mind he wasn’t experiencing much lately.

“I’ll be driving myself tonight, Ogden,” he said, slipping his arms into the narrow sleeves.

“I know, sir. Old Boys’ night.” Ogden nodded gravely.

“Is there something wrong with the Rolls, Ogden?”

“On the contrary, sir.”

“Good, then. I saw you working away on it so diligently this afternoon, I thought there might be a problem.” Ogden had been, with him for nearly thirty years, ever since he’d been able to afford a good butler
cum
valet
cum
batman.

“I wasn’t aware I’d been observed, sir. I was merely tuning it up a bit, making sure it was ready, since you’d be taking it out yourself this evening. Here, now, let me give the collar a quick brush.”

Mrs. Grasse appeared at the end of the hall, watching.

“Ah, Mrs. Grasse, a parting thought—would you be so kind as to leave me a plate of biscuits and a thermos of cocoa before you retire? The digestive biscuits?”

“Yes, Professor. I’ll remember. It’s Old Boys’ night … you’re a creature of habit, you are, Professor.”

“Yes, well, that’s as may be.” He pulled on his gloves, tugged his white silk scarf into place, made sure the fly front of the coat was flat. “Well, then, good-night. Have a pleasant evening. Go to the pictures … something.”

“A quiet evening of television,” Ogden said. “Goodbye, Professor.”

The moment the door closed behind the departing professor, Ogden turned and made a shooing motion at the blocky figure of Mrs. Grasse. “Hurry,” he said impatiently. “The cellar stairway … no, no, I’ll close the door after me.” Ten seconds after Prosser left, the hall was empty, the door at the end which led to the cellar closed tight.

Once again, taking precautions paid off.

When, at the turning of the key in the ignition, the Rolls-Royce exploded with a consumptive roar, all the windows across the front of the house exploded inwards. The windows above and flanking the front door filled the hallway with needles of broken glass. The front of the garage disappeared as well.

T
HE AFTERNOON SKY COVERED THE
visible world like the inside of a perfect robin’s-egg blue bowl, a sort of metaphysical bell jar under which all was perpetually well. Gentle breezes blew in from the outfield, carried the shouts of the ballplayers as the sleepy game dawdled into the sixth inning. The Pirates had built a six-to-three lead over the White Sox but had just sent an untested rookie to the mound.

“It could be a good game yet,” Maxim Petrov said. He was wearing a yellow waterproof windbreaker he’d picked up in Havana. The sun baked his face. “The pitcher is a mere boy … the White Sox just might hit him …” He bit off a huge piece of mustard-drenched hot dog and licked the remnants from his mouth.

“Baseball is for the birds,” his friend said, taking a great swallow of cold beer. He handed the oversize cup to Petrov who washed down the rest of his hot dog. He picked up another hot dog.

“Arden, what you lack is the subtlety to appreciate the infinite complications. To you it is boring … to me it is a hotbed of conflict—damn! I love it! Do you think I should defect?”

Arden Sanger winced: “Don’t say that, not even in jest.”

“All right. But I love baseball.” A White Sox batter doubled down the right field line. Several hundred spectators clapped perfunctorily. They were, for the most part, old, or infirm, or both.

“And don’t lecture me about subtlety,” Sanger said grumpily. “Not after unleashing those two imbeciles in Boston …”

“But I did not unleash them, as you perfectly well know. It was such a simple job—a joke, as I’ve told you—and we sent Prosser some low-grade merchandise. I can’t accept responsibility for every mistake …” He frowned at the thought: “If I did, I’d have no time for anything else. I thought those two men were perfect for such an elementary task … I was wrong.”

“You can say that again.” Sanger finished the beer.

“You must admit it would have been embarrassing … the Father of your country nothing but a traitor …” He chuckled ruefully.

Sanger grunted.

“You’ve finished the beer,” Petrov said. “I still have half a hot dog …”

Sanger motioned for another beer.

“Following your logic,” Petrov said as another White Sox batter smashed a double, this one to left, making the score six to four, “I should say that you wiped out an entire landing party and a very costly fishing trawler—” He took the beer. Sanger paid.

“Fishing trawler,” Sanger said sourly. “Is it my fault if your boys are no damn good in a shooting match? We lost some, too, you, know.”

“Some, yes. We lost every man.” He shook his head, licked foam from the corners of his mouth. “What a mess …” He sipped more beer. “You know that you owe us something … we discussed that. We are agreed, is that correct?”

“Grudgingly. But, yes, agreed. Tit for tat.”

“And what is it that you’re going to give us?”

“It’s already done.” Sanger stared straight ahead at the game.

“Indeed?”

“The old man,” Sanger said. “To show our good faith.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. The old man … We’re both better off.”

A White Sox batter took two quick strikes. It appeared for the moment that the kid pitcher was out of trouble. The batter hit a home run on the next pitch.

“What did I tell you?” Petrov said, wishing he weren’t going back to Moscow at midnight. “The score is tied.”

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1978 by Thomas Gifford

cover design by Michael Vrana

978-1-4532-6608-3

This 2012 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com